Friday, October 8

But my family got the fuck out while I still had stabilisers on my bicycle, and I've really only been back since to witness the funerals of old family friends.

Now, is it me, or do people and things turn strange west of Heathrow? And get increasingly strange, all the way to the tip of unreason that is Cornwall, with its rum facial duplet: either they're pasty-pasty (the living dead) or liberally treated with linseed oil (those that can still chew - but tend to do so when they're talking).

To Wales. Well, okay: I did once reluctantly agree to a week-long holiday down there, during which I drove through the heart of Wales - in a day. If desolation's your thing . . . urban and rural: look no further. (By comparison, Dalston isn't even trying.)

In Anyway, Talk Tidy is a site listed in BOAT DRINKS. The link itself is to an article about the coolness of Wales. Cool? No, I don't think so. Like anywhere else, there's a few cool people swimming against the tide in a sea of turds.

I have to say that I go with the deliberately provocative assertions given to Dr Fagan in Evelyn Waugh's debut novel Decline and Fall, that the Welsh are not akin to neither Irish nor Scottish celts, but " . . . are of pure Iberian stock - the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe who survive only in Portugal and the Basque district." (And that's just a starter for ten - if you want more, go read the novel.)

I myself feel much more sympatico and look much more like my friends on the Iberian Peninsula than the wild-eyed celts on the outskirts of our island.

To Wales. As it stands, I have some time for SFA and GZM, and then, and then? I'm borne back not so ceaselessly into the past . . .

PS: one last thing. In a week which saw Get Carter voted Britain's greatest film, I want to mention Villain, a film of similar vintage starring Richard Burton. Read this about the film, and the book behind it.

For the record, my favourite British* films are - aside from the two mentioned above, and in no order - these:

A Clockwork Orange

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Performance

Withnail & I

Billy Liar

Brighton Rock

Peeping Tom

The Elephant Man

A Hard Day's Night

A Room for Romeo Brass

Robinson in Space

The Witchfinder General

The 39 Steps (Hitchcock)

A Matter of Life and Death

Tom Jones

Charlie Bubbles

Barry Lyndon

Alfie

A Prick Up the Ears

Cul-de-Sac

Gumshoe

Naked

Nil By Mouth

Kes

Educating Rita

Life Is Sweet

Beautiful Thing

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Wonderland

* I'm limiting British to those films that are about Britain - regardless of wherever the director is from, hence the inclusion of Polanski and the absence of several favourites by Hitchcock from his American period peak. There's so many films I love that have British directors but are not set here: The Third Man, Don't Look Now, Blade Runner and Memento would all be listed, and I could go on some.
Link

It must be said that, as dictators go, you're kind of pathetic. Instead of using a military coup
or systematic persecution to get power, you just happen to be the head of the only party in Great Britain
that isn't a cretinous joke. While not very impressive, it is none the less effective:
you can do whatever the hell you like without any chance of being voted out of office.

Enough people recognise that the alternatives would have them selling their parents and children
on eBay to pay for their own dental care (forever seeking to replicate your Colgate grin),
or bowing down in sandal-socked subservience to theocratic murderers who surprisingly declined
the liberal offer to shake hands and kiss it better.

As such, you can choose to ignore the rabble, or piss on them from a great height - and get away with it,
preaching the Gospel according to Blair using bits of whatever eastern philosophies
happen to be floating through your transom.